Nowadays, it has been having a lot of debate concerning the existence of a mental logic. This idea has been suffering countless attacks, as much for specialists that believe that whole reasoning elapses of mental models (e.g., Johnson-Laird & Byrne, 1993), as for those who defends that the human reasoning is content dependent (Holyoak & Cheng, 1995). That controversy invaded international magazines like Psychological Review. However, the authors of the Theory of the Mental Logic - TLM - believe that few cognitive scientists really understand this theory (O'Brien, 1998a). In this context, the present article intends to bring this discussion for the national scenery. Some theories about the deductive reasoning will be presented, as well as the main critics to the existence of a mental logic and the " defense " of those who advocates in favor of the existence of this logic. Finally, TLM will be discussed.
Logical reasoning; Theory of the Mental Logic; Mental Models; Theory of Pragmatic Schemas